Experiments on Active Cloaking and Illusion for Laplace Equation

In recent years, invisibility cloaks have received a lot of attention and interest. These devices are generally classified into two types: passive and active. The design and realization of passive cloaks have been intensively studied using transformation optics and plasmonic approaches. However, active cloaks are still limited to theory and numerical simulations. Here, we present the first experiment on active cloaking and propose an active illusion for the Laplace equation. We make use of a resistor network to simulate a conducting medium. Then, we surround the central region with controlled sources to protect it from outside detection. We show that by dynamically changing the controlled sources, the protected region can be cloaked or disguised as different objects (illusion). Our measurement results agree very well with numerical simulations. Compared with the passive counterparts, the active cloaking and illusion devices do not need complicated metamaterials. They are flexible, in-line controllable, and adaptable to the environment. In addition to dc electricity, the proposed method can also be used for thermodynamics and other problems governed by the Laplace equation.